For someone who has made only four albums in a career spanning 13 years, Jill Scott has an outsized reputation. In an age when superlatives run riot for otherwise ordinary talents, she is seen as not only one of the key figures in the re-emergence of soul music this century – alongside Maxwell, Erykah Badu and R. Kelly, among others – but one of its finest exponents.

Her connection to the deep soul of the 1970s – in many ways the last hurrah for the genre before modern R&B and then hip-hop transformed it – is lauded by her peers and critics. Her ability to mix spirituality (as distinct from religiosity) and feminism, sensuality and fire in music that can be tender and angry has drawn millions of fans. Her determination to do it her way, and at the time of her choosing, has annoyed record labels and thwarted their plans to turn her into some kind of megastar.

And this is without considering her acting career, on stage and in film and TV, most notably her role as Precious Ramotswe in the film and then made-for-TV follow-ups based on the Alexander McCall Smith books The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Jill Scott (right) in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Yet when pressed on the relative thinness of her musical output, Scott, 41, says: "I'm just getting the groove of it now. I'm starting to understand how to do this."

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But the writer, singer and co-producer is planning to make up for this with two and possibly three albums in the next year or so – just maybe not all the kind of albums you expect from her.

The first of them is what she's calling the "lullaby album" – "a medicinal record, made for people who can't sleep".

"I want to erase all the programming that we have all day in our minds," she says. "I want people to wake up feeling fortified and nurtured and loved. We go to sleep with the television on, and all kinds of things get in our heads, and I wanted to create some music that was beautiful, and not stereotypical lullabies, either.

"It's a very hands-on record. I had [the musicians] touch things and smell things – soft blankets, very soft blankets. And I burnt specific types of incense. I played certain sounds underneath our session, a certain kind of frequency. They don't know that, though. They did ask why are there soft, fluffy blankets in here now [and I said], 'Hmm, I have no idea.' "

The band, who include pianist Robert Glasper and bass player Derek Hodge, had a long and personal connection with her beyond their musicianship, most notably drummer Lil John Roberts, her former partner and father of her four-year-old son, Jett.

"Music is a conversation and I give musicians pictures, I give them the story, from what the air smelt like to what colour I'm wearing to whether I'm an adult or child, or I'm in water," Scott says. "I try my best to explain, and some musicians understand that and some don't."

Emotional commitment has been a cornerstone of her albums, and whatever methods she uses to get that do seem to work.

"I see music in pictures and if I can't see the picture then it's not good enough yet," Scott says. "I now understand my musical process. It's taken me 13 years to understand it but now I get it. I need to sleep, I need rest – that's when dreams happen. The majority of my dreams are very vivid. I dream in colour.

"Often times when I don't have anything to say, I catch the bus and I ride and listen to people's conversations. I watch body language, I smell perfume and cologne and funk. And then I make an attempt to be as honest and as genuine with the notes as possible. I'm a writer before I am anything and I try my best to paint pictures."

With Scott performing in Australia later this year for the first time, I ask how she controls emotions – hers and ours – on stage.

"I think at this point I have an understanding with a live audience that what I'm doing now is spirit work and I have to allow my energy and my body language and my voice and my thoughts to be inside each and every song to build the parameters for the moment," she says. "I hire musicians that are understanding of that and don't do things to break the spirit, and I pray that the audience will allow themselves to be that vulnerable and open as well.

"So when it's happy and I look out in the audience and I see faces that are beaming, I know I am in the right place. If I look out in the audience when I'm singing something tender and I see people dancing and kissing, holding hands, people with their arms in the air, I know that I'm doing the right thing. And I just try my best to stay in that clinch."

Jill Scott will play the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on November 23. Tickets go on sale on June 18.

She plays in the Riverside Theatre in Perth on November 17, the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on November 19 and the Tivoli in Brisbane on November 21